On this episode, Wilco talks the 3 types of affiliates to promote your product
- Those who promote for the product.
- Those who promote for EPCs.
- Those who promote for friends.
So listen below to find out how Wilco puts everyone in baskets based on why they would promote his products and why they wouldn’t.
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Hey, everyone. Welcome back. Today, we’re going to talk about something that might be a bit controversial or it has some … Let’s call it “reputation problems” to say the least, right? If you’ve been following me for a while, then you know that I’ve been doing a lot of affiliate-based launches, and what that means is that when I launch a new product or I have a special discount going on, we actually invite a bunch of affiliates, a bunch of people who will then promote our product to all of their customers all at the same time.
Instead of saying, “Hey, we have this affiliate program, and you can join every time, and you can just keep on promoting it,” which obviously is possible, but what I do instead is before I do a certain promotion, before I launch a new product in the market space, I start roughly like 1 or 2 months in advance by gathering affiliates and asking, “Hey, do you want to promote this product on this date?” I all gather them around the exact same date so that we can actually do a special offer for, for example, 5 or 6 days, and all these affiliates, they all do their best to promote that product all at the same time.
That’s one of those moments when you probably … You probably experience that yourself as well when a new product hits the market, and all of a sudden, you get like 20 different emails from 20 different people all saying that you should grab that product, that you should actually get access. That’s because it works. It works incredibly well, but for some reason, it has a bit of a … Like I said, a bit of repetition problem especially for those who are more inside … Let’s call it the “SUS” or “Start-Up Scene.”
Like I said, it’s been incredibly effective. For me, it is and has been my number 1 draw channel. It’s been my number 1 channel for getting new customers on board. Personally, it’s so far the only way I’ve seen to generate at least 7 figures in just a few days. I haven’t been able to do that with Facebook ads in just a few days. I haven’t been able to do that with any other channel in just a few days, but with this model, it’s definitely possible. I’ve done it a few times, and I love it.
The thing is like the thing I wanted to talk about today is actually how do you get affiliates to promote your product or specifically like what types of motivations help people to promote your product? The reason why I want to dive into this today is because like pretty much every single day, I get messages from people on Facebook, on email, et cetera asking, “Hey, man. I got this product coming up. Do you want to promote it?” I get that question all the time, and I’m not alone. Pretty much everyone who has known to sometimes promote an affiliate product, they will get this kind of messages.
Right now, it is not as bad as it used to be because I personally don’t promote as many products anymore like usually, in the past, I promoted way more. Now, I limit it to like one a month or so, so the more you start promoting, the more people start realizing that, so the more they start asking, “Hey, do you want to promote my product?” What I see is that there’s like a big group of “beginners” who are trying to leverage this model as well, but they’re having a hard time to get their foot into the door to actually get the attention of the affiliates and to get people to actually promote their products.
I think that is mainly because there’s a bit of a disconnect between those who want to use this model versus those who are actually the ones who are promoting. What I’ve actually realized is that there’s actually 3 types of different affiliates or like different motivations for affiliates. Pretty much every affiliate, pretty much everyone who you can get, who you were trying to get the attention of, or who you’re trying to convince that they should promote your products to all of their customers, or send out an email to their email list, or put it on their blog, or whatever it is, usually, they fit into one of the 3 categories.
Once you realize that or at least once I realized that, it suddenly became a lot easier to convince affiliates, to convince people to promote my products because I wasn’t just trying whatever. Now, I could actually see, “All right. This person actually … He is really into that,” or, “This person is really into that.” What I found is from these 3 things, so usually, they have 2 … If you have 2 … If you can convince them of 2 of these things, then you’re usually good.
In a nutshell, what I see affiliates are into or like what their main motivations are is that I see 1 group of affiliates who are mainly promoting because a product is awesome, so they’re really doing it for the product, and they’re really doing it if they would use the product themselves as well, right? They would never promote a product if it’s not really good, if it’s not groundbreaking, if it’s not new, if it’s not something that they would genuinely basically recommend to their friends, if they would talk to their friends and say, “Yeah, you should definitely get it.” That’s 1 group of affiliates who will only promote it if the product is really, really solid and that’s something they would just talk with their friends about basically.
Then, there’s another group of affiliates who mainly promote based on … who mainly make the decision whether they will be promoting based on how well it converts, so they really look at the EPC which is the Earnings Per Click or the Earnings Per Visitor, however you want to call it, and they really just want to make sure that they get the best. Basically, most … the biggest amount of those for every single email they send out to their customers. That’s their number 1 criteria. Then, there’s the third group of affiliates who mainly promote, just promoting to their friends, so they’ll basically promote. If you promote them, then they’ll promote back. That’s basically how it works, right? It’s like backscratching idea.
I’m not judging any of those three like everyone has their own motivations, but once I realized that, there’s … These are the 3 main motivators either for the product because the product is great, or because of how well it actually converts, or because whether you promoted them, or like being friends, and going to conferences, and those kinds of things.
Now, once you start realizing that, it suddenly becomes a lot easier to basically run specific campaigns where you will be convincing as many affiliates as possible. First of all, like in my strategy, how I use this knowledge is that I want to make sure that my products are awesome. If I wouldn’t be using it myself, it means that it’s not good enough, and I’ve actually had that in the past where I’ve been working on a product, and it was 95% done like I spent a lot of money, and a lot of time, and a lot of effort into it.
Then I realized that there’s actually another tool out there that already does what I’m doing, and I just deleted the whole product because I want to make sure not only that it’s an awesome product, but I also want to be unique because if I’m unique and if I’m the only one who does what I’m doing or at least in the way I’m doing it, that means that affiliates are going to be more inclined to actually promote it because they know it’s something new, something that their audience doesn’t have.
While, for example, if I would be launching a new page builder, then I know that a lot of my audience will already have click funnels, or lead pages, or any other tool like that, and my affiliates know that as well, so they’re not going to be as motivated to promote it. While if I basically create a new category of products, and they know none of their customers have that yet, and the product is really, really rock solid, it’s going to be easier for them to now say to their customers, “Hey, you should actually get this,” instead of saying, “Hey, now you should get instead of click funnels, the one that I promoted last week, now you should get this new awesome tool.” That’s not really going to work, right? That’s one my criteria. I really want to make sure that my product is rock solid, and that’s one part of the game obviously.
The second part is to make sure affiliates get that as well. What I’m actually doing is I want to make a really clear demo, and I want to make it clear in just … In the first 5 seconds, it should be clear exactly what it does and why it’s unique. If you cannot explain your product within 5 to 10 seconds, then you’re making it too complicated basically. The main thing that you’re branding it around, you should be able to communicate really, really fast because affiliates, they’re busy. They’re all busy people, so you want to convince or at least peak their interest enough to watch the rest of your demo, and you want to make sure that they get why your product is so awesome, right? That’s one thing that I do. I want to communicate how awesome my product is before it even goes live.
Secondly, we have this group of affiliates who promote because it has … Basically, they pick a product which converts best, so I want to make sure that I hit that sweet spot as well by communicating clearly how my previous products have been converting, so I make clear that … I show statistics. I share all my statistics from previous launches and perhaps … Sometimes, I’ve even launched it internally like before I do a public launch, I released that product internally like to a segment of my own email list. If that’s the case, I would also share those conversion numbers, so I would … I could literally say, “Hey, this has proven to be converting at X amount of dollars per click, or per visitor, or whatever I want to share,” and that makes sure that for the affiliates who are most interested in that, I got their interest as well.
Now, I already have 2 groups of people, right? Those who mainly promote for the product and those who mainly promote for conversions because I always make sure that my launch is convert … Like my goal is to always make sure they convert way, way better than anyone else’s, and I think I really believe that’s one of the main success factors for my launches because my affiliates know that, right? Once they promoted me, once they usually recognize like, “Hey, this is converting insanely well. I should probably promote this, do it more often the next he’s doing some kind of a launch.”
Then, thirdly, we get this group of people who just promote for friends or if you promote them. Now, that’s pretty much like a strategy call like you’re left to decide for yourself how far you want to go in that. I love to hang out with everyone. I love to go to conferences, but I know in the past, for example, I’ve been committing to do promotions for other people without even knowing what the product was.
I remember one time, someone came to me saying, “Hey, I’ll definitely promote your product, but you just have to make sure that you’ll promote my products which is going to be ready in a couple of months.” At that time, I said yes. A couple months later, I saw the product and it was … Pardon my French, but it was not good. It was bad. It sucked, right? Basically, it was a terrible product.
From that moment on, I realized like I’m never going to commit to doing a receipt, what I call that, so I’m never going to commit without like just … I’m not promoting a product just for the sake of someone promoting me. I’m not going to do it. I’d love to have a look at it. I’d love to check it out, to see evidence of it, but my main reason like I actually fall in the first category. My reason if I would promote a product is because I should love the product. I should be using it myself. I should be talking with my friends about it.
If your product is that good, then I will promote. If not, I’m not going to promote it, so I’m not doing it just for the receipt or I’m not doing it just for the sake of getting them to promote me, but that’s obviously a strategy call because I’ve seen … I know quite a lot of people who are doing that exact strategy. They promote people to make sure they promote back.
If I look at their numbers really, really well, but hopefully, you’ll have to basically ask that question to yourself like, “What’s most important for you?” For me personally, it’s not really about the money. I just want to do what I love, so for that reason, I only want to promote products that I really believe in and I actually use myself. Once again, that’s all for you to decide.
That’s basically what it said, right? Once you notice, once you’re clear of that, there are 3 groups of affiliates with 3 different motivations. Usually, they have at least two of these motivations so either for … They want to promote the best kind of products, they want to have the highest conversions, or … and/or they want to just promote people who are going to promote them back or so like their friends.
Once that clear, now you can formulate a strategy on what you think is your strengths, right? Maybe you are good network, and maybe you want to go for that friendly relationship, and you just want to make sure that they promote you just because you promote them and just because you … you’re going to all these conferences. Maybe you have a rock solid product and you think, “Hey, that’s actually the core thing I should be focusing on,’ or maybe you’re really, really good at conversions and you know you want to go after that group, but whatever it is, make up your mind and go for it.
I think that like just having this sort of vision in place and instead of just going in blind and just trying to convince everyone of everything helped me a lot to convince a lot of affiliates to promote my products, and that’s why my launches have been this big of a success basically. I hope that helps. I hope it also inspires you to … especially if you’re not doing any affiliate-based launches to consider it because it’s incredibly effective. If you’re listening and you’re one of my friends who are already doing launches, then now you know how I do it and how I put everyone in baskets based on why they would promote my products and why they wouldn’t. I hope it helps and talk to you all soon.
"I want to make sure not only that it’s an awesome product, but I also want to be unique."
"I want to communicate how awesome my product is before it even goes live."
"I would promote a product is because I should love the product. I should be using it myself. I should be talking with my friends about it."
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